towel. 'You see, I've been a rotten failure all my life, and Jasmine always picked up the pieces.' He hooked the spectacles back over his ears and pushed them up the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. 'Everything always sounded so glorious at the start, and then somehow-' He shrugged and let the sentence hang.
Meg poured boiling water into two mugs, sloshed the teabags around for a bit, then plopped them in the sink. 'There's no milk. Sugar?' Theo nodded and she stirred in a spoonful before handing him the mug. They moved to the table and Meg sat in her usual chair. She rubbed at a smudge in the wood's dark gloss, marveling at this sudden surge of proprietary feeling. She'd never really possessed anything-a few bits and pieces bought for the furnished bedsit, her sister's castoffs-never anything that inspired a sense of pride, of expanding the boundaries of her self past her own body.
'The table belonged to our Aunt May,' Theo said, watching her. 'I'm surprised Jasmine kept it.'
'She never talked much about it. The years you lived in Dorset, I mean. I know you came to England to live with your aunt when your father died, but that's about all.' Meg sipped her tea and studied Theo, searching for some resemblance to her friend. There was something, perhaps, in the set of his eyes, the oval shape of his face. He looked younger than his forty-five years, almost boyish-his face seemed curiously unmarked by experience.
Suddenly aware of how she must look, she ran her fingers through her hair. She'd left the bedsit without so much as a wash and a brush. 'Jasmine talked about you, though,' she continued a little hurriedly, covering her discomfort, 'things you did as children. And she was pleased about your shop. She thought you'd finally found something that suited you.'
Theo took his glasses off again and covered his face with his hands. 'I couldn't tell her,' he said, his voice muffled by his palms.
Meg waited a moment. When he didn't continue she said, 'Tell her what?'
He raised his head. 'It's just like the rest. A cock-up. I can't hang on much longer.'
'But-'
'I thought that's why she wouldn't see me-that she just didn't want to hear it again. She'd told me this was the last time. 'No more free rides, Theo.' What was I to say?' He swallowed. 'Then when she called and wanted to see me-'
'Would you have told her?'
Theo shrugged guilelessly. 'I was never much good at lying.'
'You must have been in a panic.'
Theo nodded. 'Didn't sleep that night, trying to work out what to say.'
'She wouldn't have been angry with you.'
'That would almost have been better.' Theo's mug sat untouched on the table before him. He picked it up and drank thirstily, then licked his lips. 'You don't understand what it's like to let someone down again and again. If she'd shouted at me, that I could have managed. Other people have done it often enough.' He smiled. 'But I'd wait for the flash of disappointment on her face-she could never quite conceal it-then she'd smile and make excuses for me. As if it were somehow her fault. I couldn't bear it.'
Meg hesitated over the words forming on her lips, unsure of her right to ask them. 'Will you be all right now? With the mortgage taken care of?'
Theo put his glasses on, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with the gesture Meg already found familiar. The light from the table lamp bounced off the lenses, shielding his eyes from her. 'If probate doesn't drag on too long, if trade isn't too abysmal, I might scrape by. I know this is a terrible thing to say, but this happened just in the nick of time.'
Kincaid stepped through the street door, then paused in the stairwell of his building, rotating his head to ease his aching neck and shoulder muscles and running a hand through his already rumpled hair. He'd spent the afternoon doing the kind of thing he most disliked, following up the vague and tenuous connections in Jasmine Dent's life. Former co-workers, employers, her doctor, her dentist, her insurance agent-anyone who might remember a name, an incident, provide a thread attaching past and present.
He came up blank, as he had suspected he would.
The murmur of voices came to him as he reached Jasmine's landing. Pausing, he cocked his head and listened, assuring himself that the sound issued from Jasmine's flat.
He fitted his key in the lock and quietly opened the door. Margaret Bellamy and Theo Dent sat at the dining table. They turned at the sound of the door, their faces frozen in that startled, guilty expression of children caught out at something forbidden.
'Mr. Kincaid?' Meg recovered first. She flushed and half rose from her chair.
'A tea party?' Kincaid said, and smiled at them. 'Is anyone invited?'
Meg pushed her chair back. 'Here. Let me-'
'No,' Kincaid said as he turned toward the kitchen, 'I'll get my own. I know my way around well enough.'
They sat in awkward silence, their eyes fixed on Kincaid as he filled the electric kettle and put a tea bag in the pottery mug he'd begun to regard as his own. After a few moments, Meg turned to Theo and spoke with determined cheerfulness. 'I know your village. I'm from Dorking, and I must have passed through it a hundred times on the way to my granny's in Guildford. Is your shop the one just at the crook in the road?'
Theo nodded, still watching Kincaid. 'That's right. Across from the clock and the bell-ringer.'
'Must be lovely,' Meg said rather wistfully, 'all on your own like that.'
Kincaid carried his cup to the table and sat down, then unbuttoned his collar and loosened the knot in his tie. 'Which one of you,' he said, smiling at them companion-ably, 'has the key to this flat?'
Meg looked down at the table, twisting her cup in her hands. 'I do. Jasmine had me make a copy, in case she couldn't get to the door when I came round.'
'Why didn't you mention it before?'
'I didn't think of it.' Meg met his eyes, her brow furrowed in entreaty. 'Honestly. I was so upset it just never crossed my mind. Does it matter?'
'Tell me again what happened after you left Jasmine last Thursday afternoon.'
She thought for a moment, her face relaxing as she remembered. 'I walked home. I couldn't stand still, hadn't the patience to wait for the bus. I felt I might burst with the relief of not having to help Jasmine die. It was such a lovely day, do you remember?'
Kincaid nodded but didn't speak, not wanting to risk halting the flow of words.
'Everything seemed so clear and sharp; the lights coming on in the dusk, the crowds hurrying home from work. I felt a part of it all but lifted above it at the same time. I felt I could cope with anything.' She looked from Kincaid to Theo, twin spots of color staining her cheeks. 'It sounds absurd, doesn't it?'
'Not at all,' said Theo quickly. 'I know exactly-'
Kincaid interrupted him. 'Then what happened, Meg?'
She shoved her hair behind her ear and looked down at her hands. 'He was there, at the bedsit, waiting for me.'
'Roger?' asked Kincaid. Meg nodded but didn't speak, and after a moment Kincaid prompted her. 'And you told him what had happened, didn't you?'
She nodded again, her hair falling across her face, and this time she didn't push it back.
'What did Roger do?' The silence stretched. Theo opened his mouth to speak and Kincaid gave him a quick warning head-shake.
'I thought he'd shout. That's what he does, usually.' She rubbed the ball of one thumb against the nail of the other with great concentration.
Kincaid realized the daylight was fading, cut off by the buildings to the west, and the three of them sat illuminated in the pool of light cast by the single lamp.
Meg took a breath and laced her fingers together, as if to stop the compulsive rubbing. She glanced at Theo, then looked at Kincaid as she spoke. 'He went silent. I've seen him that way once or twice before, when he was really angry. It doesn't sound much, but it's worse than words. It's almost like-' she frowned as she searched for the right description, 'a physical force. A blow.'
'He didn't say anything?' Kincaid asked, letting a hint of disbelief creep into his voice.
'Oh, he called me things at first,' the corners of her mouth turned down in a grimace, 'but it was like his mind
